Chapter Text
“Come on,” Roman hissed, craning his neck to peer over the sea of heads and black-coated backs that filled the Great Hall. “Turn around, turn around, turn around—”
“Who are you looking at, dear?” Janus asked, without so much as an upward glance. He remained focused on his task of slathering a piece of toast with objectively too much butter, legs kicked out across the bench beside him. His tendency to take up more space than was available had forced a cluster of third years to pack together, almost on each other’s laps, in order to avoid being shoved off the end of the table.
“Who else would he be looking at?” Virgil sounded, as always, deeply tired.
Roman ignored them both, occupied as he was by his attempts to hone his brain waves into a form of telepathic communication.
Janus traced Roman’s gaze with the pointed end of his knife and proffered up a dramatic eye roll once the blade stilled, hovering above the blot that was the target's back. “Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs.”
Virgil squinted at him. “Since when do Purebloods read Shakespeare?”
“True poetry transcends all worldly boundaries,” said Janus, loftily.
“That was literally the most pretentious thing you’ve ever said.”
The resulting offended scoff was drowned out by the ringing in Roman’s chest as, at last, his angry subliminal message pulled through, and Patton Sadeghi swiveled around in his seat.
A sniffling first-year had shuffled up behind him, presumably seeking counsel, her arms wrapped around her body and fingers tightened into the fabric of her robes. He leaned down and flashed the girl that infuriating thousand-watt smile of his, reaching out a broad hand to ruffle her hair. She melted on the spot. Typical.
Roman watched Sadeghi’s mouth form a series of inaudible words that coaxed the kid’s shoulders down from where they had been tightened up to her ears, culminating in a cheerful thumbs-up and a phrase which Roman recognized the motions of by sight alone: “You got this, kiddo!” She darted forward to give him a shy hug, and scurried back to the other side of the Hufflepuff table.
Emotional support thus provided, the older boy started to turn back to his friends, but on the way, his gaze snagged on Roman’s across the room. He beamed and waved. Roman grinned winningly back and held his hand up by his forehead in a two-fingered salute.
As soon as Sadeghi looked away, the smile slid off Roman’s face, a withering scowl rising to take its place.
“What a wanker,” Roman huffed, slumping back down into his seat with his chin in his hand. He could still see about a third of Sadeghi’s back, and he glared resolutely at it. The always-rumpled mess of dark curls caught the sunlight filtering in through the big windows as Sadeghi tipped his head back with laughter at some apparently hilarious joke of Remy’s.
“You’re full of it, Princey,” Virgil informed him through a huge mouthful of scrambled egg. His Gryffindor tie, hanging loose around his neck, had long stopped attracting stares, but the unholy mountain of food on his breakfast plate had not. Five and a half years of friendship, and Roman still couldn’t watch him eat without feeling vaguely sick. He gazed in unmitigated horror as Virgil poured a solid half cup of syrup over his black pudding. “Pat’s, like, the nicest fucking person alive.”
“Exactly,” Roman said. “It’s inhuman. He’s got to have some sort of agenda.”
“He is suspiciously perfect,” Janus conceded, tapping a thoughtful finger against his chin. “Head Boy? Quidditch captain? Nine OWLs?”
“Incredible shoulders?” Roman sighed, and then added, “Or so I’ve heard people say.”
Janus raised an eyebrow at him. “You, too, could have incredible shoulders if you spent more time with the weights and less time obsessively tracking the Hufflepuff team’s stats.”
“It’s research,” Roman snapped, “For the good of our House. How could they go from bottom of the league to contenders for the Cup in less than a year, without some sort of— of— Untoward scheming?”
“Yeah, and maybe Patton is manipulating people into adoring him by abusing the power of kindness and friendship,” said Janus dryly.
Roman’s face lit up. “You know, you could be right.”
Virgil stared incredulously at him. “Not everybody has a hidden agenda.” Both Janus and Roman stared back, wearing twin expressions of confusion. Virgil sighed. “Fucking Slytherins,” he said morosely, more to the saltshaker by his left elbow than anybody present.
“Virge,” said Janus, tugging at his sleeve. He was smirking something awful. “You be Patton.” He loosened his tie and ran a hand through his shoulder-length sandy hair so that it flopped into his eyes before plopping his head in his hand, mirroring Roman, who hastily changed positions.
Virgil was grinning now, too. “Wait, wait, let me get into character.” He adjusted his collar so that it lay flat for once, and straightened his posture. “Aw, hey Roman,” he said, in a terrible, nasal approximation of Sadeghi’s chipper voice. It sounded like that freaky singing frog in the Muggle films Remus liked. “How goes it?” He paused. “Kiddo?”
“Ohhhh, awful,” Janus flat-out moaned, “I need you to pay attention to me twenty-four seven or else I die.”
“I’m just so busy passing all my classes,” Virgil chirped. The merry smile on his face was truly disconcerting. “Not that you’d know what that’s like.” Roman threw a napkin at him. “But don’t worry, I’ll always make time to argue with you.”
“I loathe you and your incredible shoulders.”
“No, babe, I loathe your shoulders.”
“I don’t have to listen to this,” Roman announced over the sound of Virgil’s cackling. He shoved his plate away from him and snatched his bag from the ground. “I’m going to Quidditch practice and I’m never speaking to either of you again.”
“I’m also on the team, dumbass,” Janus called after him.
Roman sulked all the way out the front of the castle and down to the Quidditch pitch. He burst into the locker room, still fuming, and in his distraction, managed to both put his training kit on backwards and forget his gloves. After he had righted the mistakes, he fetched his broom from the shed, stormed onto the field, and kicked off into the sky.
A few loop-de-loops later, he felt a little better. He never could stay properly cross whilst flying. It was a lovely November day, cold but bright, and the wind nipped at his heels as he shot upwards into the watery blue sky and swooped between fat rows of clouds, dangling as if by invisible threads, white and soft as fresh snow.
Thus distanced from the ground and therefore, his terrible, terrible best friends, he settled in for a leisurely lap around the circumference of the pitch. Hogwarts always looked most beautiful from above: The verdant, manicured expanses of lawn, the spindly towers and intricate stonework crawling with ivy, the dense, oblong silhouette of the Great Lake, so dark that it looked almost black, all encased by a thick strip of forest.
The way the trees crowded together shoulder-to-shoulder had always reminded Roman of a group of people, tufts of fluffy foliage representing the tops of their heads as they bent together, perhaps conspiratorially, perhaps in affection.
Roman dove a little lower and watched as his team traipsed, either alone or in small clumps, into the locker room, before spilling out onto the pitch in a misshapen splotch of green and silver and brown, laughing, gleaming. A rush of affection overtook him, as he alighted on the grass beside them to be met with a chorus of back slaps and hollered “Rooo-man!”s and one solemn nod, courtesy of Logan.
Roman gave him a bewildered wave in return. The kid was one of the strangest people Roman had ever met (what thirteen year old led conversations with “Salutations?”), but he was a scarily good beater, and Remus’ best friend, and so Roman somewhat awkwardly humored his eccentricities.
“Alright, team,” Roman said, tucking his broom in the crook of his elbow so as to clap his hands together, “We have a lot of work to do today, so let’s get right into it. For a warm-up, find a partner, and—”
“What, no speech today?” asked Katrina, the reserve keeper.
“No time for speeches,” Roman told her, and recoiled at the subsequent volley of boos hurtled his way. He rolled his eyes. You make one tearful, drunken soliloquy... “Fine,” he said, “Here’s one. Slytherin hasn’t lost the Cup in three years, and if we break that streak on my first go as Captain, I will personally hex off all your kneecaps.”
“Cheers, mate,” said Janus.
Once they were all in the air and engaged in their usual starting series of drills, Janus abandoned productive work in favor of loitering by Roman’s shoulder. Logan, used to this, drifted over to form a group of three with Kat and Noah.
“I’m still cross with you,” Roman informed him, lobbing the quaffle across the pitch to Rafaela, who missed it, cursed, and plunged after it.
“You’re not really, are you?” Janus asked, keeping pace with him even as Roman dove headlong into a series of sharp dips and turns in a fruitless effort to escape. “Yeah, we were taking the piss, but that’s just how the three of us are, you know that.”
Roman did know that, but it still inexplicably rankled at him. A good bout of friendly bullying over his hair or his grades was one thing, but when it came to Quidditch— to Sadeghi— it was different. Not that he was about to tell Janus that.
“D’you reckon we should do a practice match today?” he asked instead. “Or some more technical work?”
“Let’s worry about technique after we grind Hufflepuff into the ground,” Janus said. “We need to focus on our plays.”
He was right, as usual. Roman narrowly managed to catch a throw with a particularly brutal backspin, and yelled, “Save those for the keeper, Raf!” as he pitched it back towards her. Turning his attention back to a still-hovering Janus, he added, “Don’t you have something better to be doing right now?”
“I don’t need to bother with Chaser drills,” Janus sniffed.
“Everybody needs to have a good foundation in all aspects of the game in order to work cohesively as a team—”
“Yadda, yadda.” Janus flapped his hand open and shut like it was the mouth of a puppet. “Can I get out the practice snitch?”
Roman sighed. “Go ahead.”
“Um, Roman?” one of the other chasers yelled. He followed their pointing finger to a group of predominantly yellow splotches on the ground below, led by a familiar pair of broad shoulders and round spectacles that glinted opaquely in the morning light.
Roman swore, loudly.
“Janus, come with me,” he instructed, and swept into a descent.
He made a (brilliant, graceful) landing a few feet in front of Sadeghi, Janus right behind him. The thump of a third pair of feet against the turf revealed that Logan had taken it upon himself to tag along too, nosy little bugger.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Roman said, crossing his arms.
“Practicing Quidditch, of course,” Sadeghi said innocently, furrowing his brow in mock confusion. “Why do you ask?” He was flanked by a girl with a shaved head that Roman didn’t know the name of, and Remy, who smirked and waggled their black-painted fingernails at Roman. He resisted the urge to flip them off.
“Fat chance,” Janus spat, lip curled up in disdain. He was officially promoted back up to Roman’s favorite person ever. “This is our practice slot and it always has been.”
“Actually, we have a permit,” Remy drawled. They shook out a square of parchment and thrust it beneath Roman’s nose.
Roman had to lean back to read it. The note detailed the Hufflepuff team’s need for supplementary practice before the upcoming match, and was signed by both Sanders and Hooch. At the bottom there was a short addendum in Remy’s sloppy scrawl. Get fucked, it read.
“You can’t do this,” Roman said. “We have a game next weekend.”
“I’m aware,” said Sadeghi, “It’s against us.”
“And we can do this,” added Remy. “I don’t know if you can read, Roman, but we have very explicit permission.”
“But— but that’s not fair,” Roman spluttered.
“Oh, I didn’t realize Slytherins cared about fairness,” Sadeghi said mildly. His pleasant smile didn’t move an inch. “Would you like to go to Hooch and let her know? Maybe we can finally correct that little old book-keeping mishap from a couple years ago—”
“That was a perfectly honest victory,” Roman growled, jabbing a finger into the center of Sadeghi’s Keeper breastplate. “You’re just mad that you fucked up such an easy save.”
“I know what a confundus charm feels like,” Sadeghi insisted.
Roman bristled. “I can’t believe you’re accusing me of cheating.”
“Oh, no,” Sadeghi said, eyes wide, “Not you, Roman, I know you’re a good upstanding fellow. I just think it’s important to get the full picture. What do I have to lose?”
The implication sent waves of indignation rolling down Roman’s spine. He gritted his teeth and was preparing to launch into a detailed breakdown of all Sadeghi’s Quidditch failures throughout the years (beginning with the first game they had ever played together, in which Sadeghi got a Bludger to the shoulder and cried), when he was cut off by Logan, of all people.
“Why don’t we just share the pitch?” he asked. Roman and Janus both swung around to glare at him, but he continued to blink up at Sadeghi through the lenses of his comically bulky sports goggles, unbothered.
Sadeghi brightened. “Now that is a wonderful idea! What’s your name, kiddo?”
“Logan,” said Logan, the traitor.
“Well, thank you Logan! Perhaps we can even do a itsy-bitsy scrimmage, get the blood pumping. How’s that sound?”
“I think it sounds great.” Logan even proffered a rare, small smile.
Roman knew he was gaping like a loser, but he couldn’t stop himself. Sadeghi reached over and placed one gentle finger beneath Roman’s chin, pushing his jaw shut. “I’m so glad we could come to a compromise.”
“I don’t like you,” said Roman flatly.
Sadeghi leaned over and patted his shoulder. “Aw, Roman, I know. But sometimes, we’ve gotta do the mature thing and cooperate with people that we don’t like. It’s what makes the world go round.” He smiled, all teeth. “Come on, darlings.”
With that, he shot straight into the air, zipping so close to Roman that the ensuing wind ruffled his hair, followed by the rest of the Hufflepuff team.
“Alright, maybe you have a point about him,” Janus said, staring after the trail of black and yellow now tracing perfect figure-eights through the sky. “What a prick.”
Roman liked Quidditch only slightly more than being right, so he put that admission on hold to address at a later date, and whirled on Logan. “Pardon my language, mate, but what the fuck was that about?”
“It was a good idea.”
“No, it wasn’t,” Roman said, “Because you made me look like an idiot in front of Patton bloody Sadeghi.”
He shrugged. “I didn’t have to try very hard.”
Roman shut his eyes and took several deep breaths and reminded himself that it would be bad form to hex a third year, who also happened to be one of his better beaters. “And now we have to share the pitch.”
“Why wouldn't it be good for us to play against them prior to the match?” Logan pushed his goggles farther up his nose. “We can study their strategies.”
“Or they can study ours,” Janus pointed out.
Logan raised an eyebrow. “Do you really think that we can’t outplan a bunch of Hufflepuffs?”
Roman, who was currently getting out-planned by a sprite with terrible eyewear, wasn’t at all sure of that. Now wasn’t the time to get insecure, though, because the rest of the team, drawn in by the sweet scent of a petty argument, had drifted over and regrouped on the pitch around them.
“Everybody, say thank you to Logan,” Roman said peevishly, “We are now sharing the pitch with the Hufflepuffs.”
They all groaned.
Roman felt a little guilty about the host of dirty glares now being directed at their youngest starting player, but Logan didn’t seem to notice or care. It was an enviable skill. With some difficulty, Roman directed the team’s attention back onto him, and got them started on their next drill, skipping the rest of the warm-up since they had already wasted more than enough time. Roman was a damn good captain, and they were a damn good team, and the high bells of Sadeghi’s laughter on the other side of the field was not going to distract him from that.
As the morning wore on, Roman tried to ignore the Hufflepuffs and proceed with practice as normal. This was made difficult by the fact that the others were good— Properly good— a fact that he knew wasn’t lost on the rest of the line-up, since they looked up as one every time Sadeghi yelled, “Brilliant!” or a high-speed throw whizzed through the brisk air.
Roman was seriously beginning to doubt Logan’s so-called wisdom. If this incident lessened morale to the point of carelessness, “bad form” be damned, he was going to throw the kid off the astronomy tower. Or maybe himself.
After his attempt to keep one eye on the plays the Badgers were practising and one eye on the relay drill at hand earned him a quaffle to the face, Roman decided that he had had enough. With a sharp, two-fingered whistle, he brought the Slytherins to a halt.
Motioning for them to stay where they were, he shot over towards where Sadeghi was lingering near the goalposts, watching his own team play and scribbling notes in a small yellow notebook. He caught sight of Roman approaching and shut the book with a flick of his wrist, tucking it into a pocket on his right hip. It must have been customized. Wait, did all the Hufflepuff training kits have pockets? Now that would be decidedly unjust.
“Well, hello Roman!” he chirped. “What’s on your mind?”
“Care for a scrimmage?” Roman asked.
“Sounds lovely,” he said, and stuck out a leather-gloved hand. “Here’s to a good game.”
Roman seized it and drew him into a hard, rough handshake.
“My team is going to crush yours into extremely fine dust,” Roman said.
Sadeghi leaned forward so close Roman could see the thin, glimmering rays of gold that shot through his warm brown irises. “My team is going to win,” he murmured. He squeezed Roman’s hand one last time before dropping it and speeding over towards the Hufflepuffs.
For the second time that day, Roman was left open-mouthed and red-faced, the beginnings of a retort gone sour on his tongue. He turned tail and slunk back to the Slytherins, who of course had all been intently watching the interaction from afar. They were out of earshot, fortunately, but Roman didn’t doubt that they had filled in the gaps of the story with whatever they imagined would cause him the most humiliation.
“Beat them or we’ll be doing push-ups until your arms fall off,” Roman growled, ignoring Janus’ pointedly raised eyebrow, and winged out into a lap to blow off some steam.
He landed on the edge of the central circle of the pitch to rendezvous with the Hufflepuffs, his team falling into place behind him.
Even without looking, he could appreciate the dramatic effect as they alighted into a perfect pyramid formation, bright green robes fanning out behind them and boots rhythmically hitting the turf at exact half-second intervals. The practice they had spent rehearsing that had been absolutely worth it, suck it, Logan.
Sadeghi’s lips were pursed in annoyance, obviously signifying his jealousy of their overwhelming panache and flair. A Hufflepuff could never.
Some students had taken to the stands and the surrounding lawn to enjoy the rare lack of rain, mingling with their friends or sitting with textbooks open on the grass beside them. The hum of amiable chatter carried over to the pitch, and Roman felt buoyed. It was always nice to have an audience. He straightened his shoulders and shot a wink and a grin in the direction of a group of Gryffindor fifth-years loitering beside the field, inflating with delight at the way they all instantly collapsed into a fit of bashful giggles and whispers.
Sadeghi and Janus both rolled their eyes.
“We need a referee,” was the first thing the yellow-clad captain said.
“What, you don’t trust us?” Janus leered.
Sadeghi scrunched up his nose, choosing not to dignify that with a response. “And a scorekeeper.”
“Or we could just play for fun,” a Hufflepuff kid with a shock of bright pink hair offered. “We don’t need to keep score.”
“Yes, we do,” both Roman and Sadeghi snapped.
“Cade can do it,” Remy said, gesturing to a lanky blond boy, who smiled and waved. Was that the instinctive Hufflepuff response to every situation? “His wrist is all fucked so he can’t play anyway.”
Roman peered at this Cade character. Clever of them to position a spy on the ground. “Why is he at practice if he can’t play?”
“Moral support,” chirped Cade. Roman eyed him with distrust.
“Fine,” he said, “Rules?”
“Regulation, obviously. We don’t train with underground sets.”
“Of course you don’t.”
“We’re all good to go, then, I reckon,” Sadeghi said, shooting Roman yet another blinding smile, so outwardly warm, though with an undercurrent of keenness that Roman was sure he wasn’t imagining. “Best of luck to you, Roman.” He nodded at the rest of the Slytherins. “And to all of you lovely folks.”
“I hope your glasses get snapped and you run into the goal posts because you can’t see,” Roman told him.
“They’re spelled to be unbreakable,” Sadeghi said cheerfully, “But I appreciate the concern. Okay, team, get in position!” He swept away into the sky. God fucking damnit, not again. And everybody said Roman was the theatrical one. Next time, he vowed, he was going to get the last word in or die trying. But first, he had a game to win.
They were not going to win.
Roman watched in dismay as yet another one of Remy’s shots brushed just past the tips of Bridgette’s outstretched fingers. They went in for a celebratory lap, the smug tilt of their gaze implied even from behind the reflective lenses of their sunglasses, as Cade’s magically magnified (and irritatingly upbeat) voice announced the change in score.
He made eye contact with his keeper from across the field, and she winced at something in his expression, ducking her head to avoid his gaze. Fuck. Roman tried to school his face into a more neutral position. It wasn’t Bridgette’s fault, he reminded himself. She was doing great, especially for her first year as a starter.
Still, it was hard not to feel a little bitter. They were over fifty points behind. At this stage, their only saving grace would be if Janus caught the snitch, but Roman knew that even that wouldn’t be enough to fill the angry ravine currently splintering its way through his chest.
It wasn’t even as though the Hufflepuffs were better, when it came down to the individual players, but there was just something about the way the other team worked together. Their plays, their communication and cooperation… It was so tight, so effortless. They were so fucking nice to each other. What kind of bullshit did Sadeghi have to pull to get that to happen? And how did it work?
Roman snagged a pass from Oliver and dove about halfway down the height of the field, about level with the primary area of the stands, before flinging it to Rafaela, who fell into line across from him. The two of them slung it back and forth, staying close enough together that the other team’s chasers couldn’t intercept it. Up above them, Oliver winged in a series of forward-moving circles, the shadow of his broom blotting out a section of the striped green bars running through the pitch below.
The familiar weight and rhythm of the ball in his hands steadied Roman, the adrenaline and exhilaration of a good rally piercing even though the fog of his bad mood. He twisted into a sloth-grip roll to avoid a whizzing bludger, blanching at the loud CRACK of the bat as Logan redirected its trajectory. He didn’t have time to find out what exactly that trajectory was, though, because they were approaching the scoring box.
Sadeghi was forced to look down in order to track their approach, jaw set in concentration and knees braced against each other as he kept steady on his broom. Roman fantasized about the look that would grace Sadeghi’s stupid soft face once Slytherin inevitably displayed their destiny as the superior house-slash-team (trying to remain dignified but with his chin wobbling, Roman had decided— Sadeghi was a good enough sport to try to act professional, but not a good enough sport to manage it), and thus motivated, exploded upwards with Rafaela on his tail.
He narrowed his eyes, honing in on the gleaming gold O of the hoop and twisting his center of gravity so that his entire body weight fell behind his forward thrust. The quaffle left his hand, fast and straight and true, accompanied by the satisfying twinge of resistance in his shoulder.
Sadeghi lunged, but the quick level change from the approaching chasers caused him to lose balance, as Roman had hoped, and in the following two seconds, all in the universe was well. The sun came out from behind a cloud. The stars aligned. Every bird in the world opened its mouth and sang. The quaffle flew in a clean, smooth sweep, arching below Sadeghi’s outstretched arm and through the second-highest hoop with a pleasant woosh.
“Goal for Slytherin!” Cade said. Somehow, his voice became significantly less annoying when it was forming those three beautiful words. It was music to Roman’s ears.
“Ha!” he crowed, his triumphant exclamation joining the sound of Janus’ supportive whoop from somewhere above him.
Sadeghi’s mouth twisted as he dove after the quaffle, catching it in its magically slowed-down descent before it could pass beyond the mark halfway down the goal post.
“Good shot,” he said, winging the quaffle to Remy. Raf and Oliver dove back into play, but Roman lingered at the edge of the scoring box.
“Better luck next time,” he jeered. “Hey, tell me, how does it feel to be the worst Captain on campus?”
His eyes flashed, and Roman’s stomach did a delighted flip-flop. Sadeghi only allowed himself to be properly mean when the two of them were alone— though still in his own bizarre, courteous way— and that made the whole thing so much more fun. Sahdegi seemed loath to let the whole golden boy shtick drop when in polite company, whereas Roman was a proud and very accomplished asshole.
“I don’t know, Roman,” Sahdegi said tightly, “How does it feel?”
Roman grinned. “Not one of your better comebacks, mate.”
“Some of us are focusing on the game,” he shot back. “Though maybe I shouldn’t bother. Your team is pretty,” he paused, a shit-eating grin climbing its way onto his face, “Qu-awful.”
Roman grimaced. “Oh, god.”
The corners of Sadeghi’s eyes crinkled up with stifled amusement. He tilted his head towards Roman, who swallowed, trying to tear his eyes away from the edge of the other boy’s jawline as it caught a strip of sunlight, painting his skin a warm, bright gold. “You like that?”
“Uhhhhhh,” said Roman intelligently.
He was almost relieved when a shout cut through his train of thought, jerking him away from the full reboot his brain was currently experiencing. He and Sadeghi both looked up to find a blur of pink and yellow diving in the direction of the ground. The Hufflepuff seeker. Shit.
Janus, who had been surveying the other side of the pitch, plummeted after them, his blond hair and green robes unfocusing into a streaky smudge as he too picked up speed. Roman said a silent thank-you to Janus’ posh ass parents and the consequential Firebolt as his best friend managed to catch up to the other seeker. They were neck and neck, hands both outstretched and shoulders jostling each other in such an evenly matched pace that the overall effect was that of them not moving at all.
“Come on, kiddo, you got this,” he heard Sadeghi mutter. His brow was taut with concentration and he chewed at the inside of his cheek, the anxious clench of his knuckles around the handle of his broom visible even through his gloves’ thick padding.
And then something happened that Roman couldn’t quite see, and Janus tumbled off his broom and landed flat and hard on his back. The riderless Firebolt continued to shoot forward and ricocheted off the invisible barrier at the edge of the pitch, dropping into the grass with a placid plop. The Hufflepuff dismounted, triumphant, thrusting their hand in the air to show off the glint of gold peeking out from between their fingers, to a chorus of applause and whoops.
Roman didn’t stay put to watch the way Sadeghi’s face lit up with pride and joy and that wide, open, honest smile with just the right amount of teeth, not the slightly jagged one that he always aimed at Roman. He could picture it well enough.
The collection of students that had wandered over to watch the makeshift match had begun to disband, drifting off and away from the field in small chunks.
“Nice job,” the other seeker said, holding out a hand for Janus to take. He glared at it and climbed to his feet on his own, brushing pieces of grass off his training kit.
Sidling over to Roman, who had landed a short way off, he sighed and tugged his hair out of its ponytail at the base of his neck, letting it spill over his shoulders once more. “Fuck,” he said, running a hand through it try and comb it back into some semblance of its usual model-sleekness, “Sorry, mate.”
Roman slung an arm around his shoulder. “S’okay. You alright?”
He snorted and reached his free hand around to pat Roman’s cheek. “I was less than a meter up, you big sap.” The rest of the team filled in around them, wearing matching expressions of trepidation. Roman surveyed the bashful, pointed way none of them met his eyes, and any trace of anger or bitterness drained out of him all at once. He just wanted to go sit with Janus and Virgil in the dreariest, most comforting corner of the Slytherin common room and not speak and press his cheek to the cold pane of glass and watch odd squirmy things move through the bracky water outside until the sun went away. Was that too much to ask?
“No push-ups,” he told them, and was overtaken by a wave of guilt at the way they sagged in relief. “Practice is done, we’ll debrief tomorrow. I’m proud of you guys.”
He couldn’t take out his anger over his own failures on his team. His friends. He knew that he could be a piece of shit sometimes— okay, a lot of the time— but he was not quite that kind of person. At least he really, really hoped not.
He and Janus trudged together towards the locker room, hanging some distance behind the group, not speaking. The Hufflepuff team had congregated in a semicircle near one of the goalposts, sitting cross-legged like an oversized kindergarten class. Sadeghi was giving some sort of lecture with the aid of a floating whiteboard, talking animatedly with his hands. As he spoke, an accompanying colorful pattern of notes scrawled themselves on the board as if by an invisible hand, though it was too far in the distance for Roman to make out the words.
“Don’t look at him,” Janus said. “It’s just going to piss you off.”
“It won’t piss me off.”
“Fine, then, it’ll make you sad.”
Roman didn’t have anything to say to that.
“Cheer up,” said Janus, “It was just a scrimmage.”
“I know,” Roman said, even though it wasn’t really. To him, Quidditch had never been ‘just’ anything— Not a game, or a hobby, or any of the things that adults told him it was when he got angry and threw his broom or a tantrum. Maybe it was something that he should have outgrown. Crying after Remus beat him at checkers. Shoving the neighborhood kids off their brooms so he would always win their races. Getting pissed and bickering with Sadeghi.
Winning and losing was more personal to Roman than it was to anyone else, though he didn’t really understand why. There was something in particular about the easy way Sadeghi just waved his hands or flashed that smile or whatever, and the world dropped to its knees to suck his fucking dick— Like it was nothing. Like he didn’t even have to try— that made Roman feel so small, so bitter, so hungry.
The scoreboards wouldn’t reflect this “loss”. His friends wouldn’t think less of him.
So why did it still sting?